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Are we, then, to conclude that particular things are
determined by Necessities rooted in Nature and by the sequence of
causes, and that everything is as good as anything can be?
No: the Reason-Principle is the sovereign, making all: it wills
things as they are and, in its reasonable act, it produces even
what we know as evil: it cannot desire all to be good: an artist
would not make an animal all eyes; and in the same way, the
Reason-Principle would not make all divine; it makes Gods but
also celestial spirits, the intermediate order, then men, then
the animals; all is graded succession, and this in no spirit of
grudging but in the expression of a Reason teeming with
intellectual variety.
We are like people ignorant of painting who complain that the
colours are not beautiful everywhere in the picture: but the
Artist has laid on the appropriate tint to every spot. Or we are
censuring a drama because the persons are not all heroes but
include a servant and a rustic and some scurrilous clown; yet
take away the low characters and the power of the drama is gone;
these are part and parcel of it.
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